Who writes our laws? ALEC does. American Legislative Exchange Council. AKA the 1%. Surprise!
The American Legislative Exchange Council
Is so creative when they’re through our towns’ll be
Shells of their former selves
It’ll be as if old Santa had downsized all his elves
How so you say?
Listen, I pray thee
To a sad and sorry tale
Prepare to shed tears in a vale
Just who are these smart operators, you ask
Well, I read the whole internet so I’m up to the task
On the board there are just three cokes
The drink people quit, leaving the brother Koch blokes
Telecoms, big banks, and really big insurance
Assuring the ongoing corporate crime endurance
If you’re mom and pop well you just don’t rate
At the intersection of business and state
They’ve got a lot of energy, they’ve got Texaco
Chevron, Enron, Exxon, also Amoco
Yippie-eye-ay
Yippie-eye-aw
Ghostwriters of the law
It’s a corporate bill mill, they like to meet
Behind closed doors at a swank retreat
The NRA wrote stand your ground
More and more black youth are not around
Privatizing schools and prisons and social security
Selling of the wealth to the wealthy
Lease it back to the public, that ain’t healthy
For me, or you, but
Smart ALEC knows the score,
Smart ALEC knows what for
Gives all the money so it’s hard to trace
Finds its way to a friendly face
That’s more like arsenic than old lace
Before you know it they’ve taken their place
In the white house, state house, every other great house
They change the rules, play us for fools
And legislators are their tools
Yippie-eye-ay
Yippie-eye-aw
Ghostwriters of the law
They don’t even try to influence legislation
They promote love between government and corporation
They’re rarely seen in the lobby
But writing laws is their favorite hobby
They help thwart corporate taxes by hiding their wealth
And if we even try to expose how they destroy our health
They would love to silence us or even arrest us
Nearly as much as they love asbestos
Smart-ALEC knows what to do
To keep me and you in deep doo-doo
Writes legislation to ruin the nation
And lower the station of the 99 percent
Straighten your seat backs for our final descent
Yippie-eye-ay
Yippie-eye-aw
Ghostwriters of the law
They throw a smokescreen round those who try to sting them
For defending Big Tobacco, they love the plant kingdom
And besides the evil weed these guys are deeply pharmaceutical
With the Glaxo gang lawmakers are downright cahootical
Yippie-eye-ay
Yippie-eye-aw
Ghostwriters of the law
Alberta Tarbillies
(Keystone XL pipeline).
(tune: Beverly Hillbillies)
Come listen to a story ‘bout Alberta Tar Sands
In a western province of wheat-growin’ lands
Tycoons found a complement for their blue blood
Down in the ground was some tar sand crud
Spoken:
Oil, that is, dirty oil, Pollution tea, toxic sludge…
water waste…tailing ponds…
I never swim in ammonia….if it’s mixed with cyanide….
Well the first thing you know TransCanada was there
Corporation said better move the tar but where?
Turns out Texas is the place where they refine
So they fueled up their tools and built a pipeline
Spoken:
Oil spillin’, river ruinin’, petroleum dependin’
Climate killin’…acidic….corrosive…volatile…unstable…
like its builders….fossil fools.
They say if you build it, it will spill
You can tweak but it’ll leak and wildlife it’ll kill
Runs through an aquifer we can’t live without
Will the planet survive oil industry clout?
Spoken:
Let’s hear it for long-term strategies for energy sanity!
Now let’s hear it for short-term profits!
How a-bout that destruction of indigenous lands?
Puttin’ that much sulfur and acid in a pipe – what they been smoking?!
(Slower rhythm:)
Is it time to say good-bye to atmosphere and earth?
We would like to thank you folks fer shoutin’ what it’s worth
You’re all invited back again to this locality
To share a heapin helpin of your solidarity
Spoken:
Earth-savin’, that is. Set a spell. Civil disobedience.
Y’all save the planet, y’hear?
So I’m offering this warm refrain
The mercury’s at 92
Foggy Scotland’s shores are now hot as Bahrain
Scary business melting me and you
What the Frack?!
The good people of the petroleum industry have decided to treat the earth like the government treats the elderly and the sick: expendable.
Chorus:
What the frack are they thinking
What the frack have they been drinking
Our water quality sinking
What the frackety frack!?
I don’t need their gasssss
They can kiss my
They want to shoot us up with chemicals
I don’t mean to be polemical
But shooting chemicals into rocks
Is that really thinking outside the box?
I know an easier way to get gas
Eat beans and kiss my asterisk
Footnote one:
It would be more fun
To get your power from the sun, son
And we really have sinned by ignoring the wind
And the waves
And they’re frackin’ in Texas
To get some of that frackin’ oil
They’re determined to hex us
It’s enough to bring your blood to a boil
What the frack, we gotta foil
This frackin freak show
Cut the power to the fossil fuel clique ya know
Cho:
What the frack are they thinking
What the frack have they been drinking
Our water quality sinking
What the frackety frack!?
I don’t need their gasssss
They can kiss my
Farmers forced to fracking
Aced out by agribiz
When you’ve lost your job, you gotta get by
Offered cash to trash your land and water
What are you gonna try
Six figures, that’s good roustabout pay
How could they harbor any doubt you say
But the job will last six months or less
Then you’re back where you started, but you’re under duress
They leave you in the lurch
So when you go to church
Speak up, speak out, don’t let ‘em run you out
Poor people always been expendable
When the water’s poison it’s not mendable
Cho:
What the frack are they thinking
What the frack have they been drinking
Our water quality sinking
What the frackety frack!?
I don’t need their gasssss
They can kiss my…
Footnote two: Natural gas is mainly methane
Don’t sound so friendly, more like arsenic than champagne
Your water will be so bad, polluted, sorry and sad
Your tapwater catches fire? It’s a new stove, you should be glad
We need energy independence
From Exxon, Chevron & Shell,
They need to move their offices
On down to the county jail
We’ve got shale shock,
It’s a bridge fuel……to nowhere
Cho:
What the frack are they thinking
What the frack have they been drinking
Our water quality sinking
What the frackety frack!?
I don’t need their gasssss
They can kiss my…
We Are the Ones
A look and listen at some of the grassroots social justice organizations abroad in the land. From the album “Food, Clothing, & Glaciers”
When in the course of social collapse
It becomes necessary to change society, perhaps
Jobless and homeless, can’t get ho health are, life isn’t fair
Who do we know, to help us go, help us sew
Seeds of somethin’ better, cast aside fetters
Well I met her, she sent a letter:
We’re the welfare mothers from New York City
We fight for rights don’t need your pity
But where are the people to join in our fight
To make it right, could they be hiding in plain sight
Well we are the ones, yes we are the ones
Farm Labor Organizing committee Flocs to the rescue
takes on the soup and pickle people
demanding respect for the pickle pickers, don’t you know,
fair wages and treatment for the sis and bro
Grassroots global justice, Alianza Popular
wants a new system
What Dreamers! – Wait, that’s how we make change,
For a minute I forgot
Power for working people and those who have not
Indigenous Environmental Network
Somehow got this funny idea
people are in some way part of some environment round here
Third world majority says we not only have the right to know
We have the responsibility to BE the media, step it up and go
Don’t you think youth of color queers and other marginalized multitudes
could do a better job of telling us what’s goin down
Than those gringos up at NPR with their chatty Kathy attitudes
(you heard me – I said – You can say that)
And when the CEO said you just gotta trust us
Got a big laugh from Jobs with Justice
We bailed out the rich, they got the bonus itch
Did you see what I saw, I had drop jaw
We want our dignity back, not mention homes and jobs
They say the wheels of society are coming off,
Train wreck is straight ahead
But some of us have been there all along
Somebody somewhere doin something wrong
Undernourished children in a overnourished society
When we allow poverty to continue that’s an impropriety
Who cares about health care, we care,
Who cares about immigrants, we all share
If money can move globally
so can people who have to have it to live nobly
Michigan welfare rights organization
fight against privatization for affordable water rates,
Like they did in Bolivia and by the way they won
If Bolivia can do it, Michigan can
Padres Unidos defending Denver Latinos from education asesinos
Without the Freedom to Learn Project
You got no freedom to earn prospect
We want no schoolhouse to jailhouse track
We want our dignity back
Women in Transition out in Louisville Kentucky
Do you think you get what you need by hopin, maybe little dopin C
No, you band together, stand together, don’t wait for their approval
Get up stand up against unjust child removal
Poor people’s economic human rights campaign says
we all have the right to do more than complain
about health care, housing, education, and a living wage
It’s the new black, it’s all the rage
Supports the victims of Nafta and welfare reform
Which taken together were a perfect storm
We been downsized and cast-aside
But we will not be sat astride
We need power which we can only get
From the strength and perseverance of our 93 member organizations
I’ll mention a few, most I can’t remember cause I ain’t no cyborg
you can look it up at economichumanrights.org/members
There you find among others these sisters and brothers
Alexandria United Taxi-drivers, and the Hip-Hop Congress,
Sisters Together Ending Poverty STEP
Southsiders Together Organizing for Power STOP
Toledo Foreclosure Defense League TFDL?
Direct Action Welfare Group – DAWG!
And don’t forget the Mormons
For Equality and Social Justice
All right!
INCITE! radical feminists of color workin to end violence – against women –
and communities of color through direct action, and grassroots organizing. I’m gonna go out on a limb and link ‘em
with the Indigenous Women’s Network with their Youth Cultural Arts
Program and Sustainable Communities
We are the ones…
Wild Bill Bailout: Balancing the West Bank and the World Bank
Songs from the CD “Food, Clothing, & Glaciers”:
Ballad of BP and the Massey Massacre
I won’t be making the trip
To visit Don Blankenship
In his prison cell
And I don’t wish him well
Won’t visit Tony Hayward
He’s way to wayward
Though seeing him in jail
Is my holy grail
No it isn’t fine to operate a mine
When coal is the cancer of the earth
But to sacrifice 29
To increase your bottom line
Brother you’re asking for it
Into the patrol car, officer, floor it!
Chorus
And the only proper plea
For drilling in the sea
With no referee
Is insanity
But on second thought I guess
We really ought to press
Charges including reckless endangerment,
In the presence of clear and present danger
He went straight to
manslaughter, sea slaughter, shore slaughter
Killing of land and air and water, so…
Chorus
Geithner Fit the Battle at A.I.G.
Once I built a mortgage, now it’s done,
Brother, can you spell sub-prime
Once in sharkskin suits gee we looked swell
Full of that Yankee Doodly…don’t
Half a million fools went into debt hell
I was the guy with the loan
Say don’t you remember they called me Alan
Hank Paul Larry and Tim
Say don’t you remember, I’m your pal
Brother, can you spare a diamond
When citizens default, I triple-lock my vault
But some of my homies are too big to fail
Supersize their bonus, on the poor I’ll put the onus
Anything to keep my broker’s ass out of that jail
Unprecedented failure of our national securities
We must discover who could be to blame
Could be Osama, Obama, or your mama
Heads we win, tails you lose
Main Street’s cool but Wall Street rules
Won’t you purchase our paper? Please do, I insist!
If you don’t like it buddy, hey, default swap this!
Paulson fit the battle at Goldman-Sachs
And Wall Street’s tumblin down
If there’s no remaining capital what happens to our ism
I never thought I’d ever see the day
When government has a role to play
But it’s true we’re all set
We can wash away the debt
And profit if not learn from our collapse
I love shooting craps
Housing bubbles, Don’t you whine
Makes me happy, Like a land mine
Lehman was lynched Merilly in the oh so Stern bear market
Bail out the banks and offer thanks, don’t grouse
The economy’s just lost one half its worth
And you’ve only lost your house
Profit’s all gone
It was the era of the get
Now it’s time for socialism of the debt
As for the paradox of deleveraging
Which leads to alcoholic beveraging
The way to explain it, explain it to you nice is
That the selling of trash drives down prices
We want a clean plan, not just a mean plan
Why penalize the poor
Rich people who have lost more
Than you mortgage moochers ever could have
It’s not like the sky is falling
Though it’s true your roof is gone
All is not lost but as it says in the sonnet
Doggone it, we’re working on it
There’s no shortage of reportage on our mortgage meltdown so
Why not keep the next phase of the bailout on the down low
You’d never miss a million and you cannot spell quazillion
So why not leave it up to those who caused it, those who lost it,
Those who reverse santa claus’d it
Who believe in the American Dream
Especially the part about the Ponzi Scheme
A nation of whiners gets no golden parachute
When we’re through you will be lucky if you’ve got a birthday suit
If we knew in advance what we were doing
it would be called mergers and precognitions
But we didn’t and we don’t so it’s mergers and demolitions
depositions, inquisitions, extraditions
So what if we were all in a hypnotic trance
From which we awoke with the collapse of the tallest towers of finance
Rome wasn’t bilked in a day
I know I drove this country into a train wreck
But I feel a sudden need for a a blank check
Please won’t you buy my………dreck
Have no fear
We won’t let it happen again
This year
Your Car Is Disgusting
Your car is in bad taste, according to me
Your camouflage clothing is a devious wrap
Almost didn’t see you in all that Green Beret crap
You cut quite a figure – it sure makes me meek
I’m shocked if not awed by your massacre chic
The Clear Channel Stadium only broadcasts one game
Down at Dow Diamond it’s burnt flesh this time o year
Coors Field has a rule now, they only serve Nazi beer
You think that you’re different, because in your car
You turn off hate radio, And turn on NPR
We take White House press releases
Then we read them back to you!
You wish you could change things, But you don’t know how
With an actual news source, You’d have Democracy Now
At Pizza Hut Park, they really do it in style
At Fifth Third Ballpark well, you do the math
At Home Depot Soccer Stadium, you fix the game yourself
In the land of free enterprise, the stores are all chains
They replace all community with capital gains
You allow ads all over, Tell me who is to blame
Have you at long last sir, no sense of decency or shame
Down at Whataburger Field the pitcher is on his greasy perch
Me I’m waitin’ for the Wal-mart Institute of Labor Rights Research
Me I’m just waitin’ for the First Coca-Cola Methodist Church